Android 3.0 for more than just tablets, says Google

But is it for smartphones?

Google's lead designer on the Android 3.0 UI, Matias Duarte, has revealed that the operating system although designed for tablets is also intended for other devices.

This suggests that we may indeed see the Honeycomb OS make its way to smartphones, despite hints in January that it could be released solely for tablets.

Barriers, begone!

"Tablet was the focus, but the changes we did also free it up to be more flexible for other contexts as well," Duarte told All Things Digital.

"It's really about eliminating all the barriers to all the different kinds of form factors that people might want to interact with."

Those "different kinds of form factors" could be anything from smartphones to fridges, car dashboards and Surface-style tables.

Computers suck

Duarte also talked about how the OS was intended to improve mobile computing tasks overall via improved multitasking and notifications. Google is keen to avoid falling into the same rut as PC operation, which changes relatively slowly.

"Using computers sucks, to this day," said Duarte. "Its one of my daily frustrations that the rate of change in computing experiences is so slow."

Although we're still waiting for an official release date for Honeycomb, Google is holding an event in California tomorrow, through which we should find out yet more of Android 3.0's secrets.

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